Joyce Oates - Sourland

He was smiling toothily, the smile of a child of whom much has been made by adoring elders. Leah felt herself resistant to his charms — wary of his attention. In a lowered voice he said, “Remember me? — ‘Woods’? ‘Woods Gottschalk’? Dr. Zalk and my father used to play squash together at the gym.”

Squash! Leah was sure that Harris hadn’t played that ridiculous frantic game in years.

“Of course — ‘Woods.’ Yes — I remember you — of course.”

In fact Leah vaguely recalled that something had happened to the Gottschalks’ only son — he’d been stricken with a terrible debilitating nerve-illness, or a brain tumor — or was she confusing him with the son of other friends in University Heights? What was most disconcerting, Woods had grown so large , and so mature . So swaggering . She was sure she hadn’t seen the Gottschalks enter her house — she wondered if Woods had dared to come alone to the party.

Woods murmured, with an air of deep sympathy: “Yes, it’s been a while, Mrs. Zalk. You can be sure — I’ve been thinking of you.”

The blandly glowing face assumed, for a moment, a studied look of gravity. The eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses moisted over. Woods reached out for Leah — for Leah’s hands — suddenly her hands were being gripped in Woods’s hands — a handshake that quivered with such feeling, the rings on Leah’s left hand were pressed painfully into her flesh. As if a blinding light had been turned rudely onto her face, Leah’s eyes puckered at the corners.

“You’ve been so brave .”

How uneasy “Woods” was making her! — his very name obtrusive, pretentious — staring at her so avidly, hungrily — as if awaiting a response Leah couldn’t provide. Brave? What did this brash young man mean by brave ?

Leah didn’t like it that he was smoking. That he hadn’t offered to put out his cigarette. Nor had he made even a courteous gesture of shielding her from the smoke as another person might have done in similar circumstances. She had never smoked — had never been drawn to smoking — though her college friends had all smoked, and of course Harris had smoked, both cigarettes and a pipe, for years.

At last, Harris had given up smoking when he was in his early thirties. Proud of his willpower — for he’d loved his pipe — he’d smoked as many as two packs of cigarettes a day — and had done so since the age of sixteen. Giving up such a considerable habit hadn’t been easy for Harris for he’d been involved in a major federal-grant project in his Institute lab that frequently required as many as one hundred work-hours a week and smoking had helped relieve the stress of those years — but Harris had done it and Leah had been proud of her husband’s willpower .

“It’s wonderful to see you smile, Mrs. Zalk! You are well — are you?”

“Yes. Of course I’m ‘well.’ And you?”

Leah spoke with an edge of impatience. How annoying this young man was!

As Woods talked — chattered — Leah stared at a swath of pale blond hair falling onto Woods’s forehead — yes, his hair did seem to be bleached, the roots were dark, shadowy. Yet his eyebrows appeared to have been bleached, too. A sweetish scent of cologne wafted from his skin. Woods Gottschalk was a stocky perspiring young man yet oddly attractive, self-assured and commanding. His face was an actor’s face, Leah thought — unless she meant the mask-face of a Greek actor of antiquity — as if a face of ordinary dimensions had been stretched upon a large bust of a head. The effect was brightly bland as a coin, or a moon. Lines from Santayana came to Leah — a beautiful poetic text she’d read as a graduate student decades before: Masks are arrested expressions and admirable echoes of feelings once faithful, discreet and — .

“As you see I’ve stepped outside — outside ‘time’ — and slipped away from your party, Mrs. Zalk. In one of my incarnations — speaking metaphorically, of course! — I’m an emissary from Uranus — I’m a visitor here . People of your generation — my parents’ generation — and my grandparents’ generation — are so touching to me. I so admire how you carry on — you persevere . Well into the ‘new century,’ you persevere. ”

Leah laughed nervously. “I’m not sure what option we have, Woods.”

“Look, I know I’m being rude — circumlocution has never been my strong point. My mother used to warn me — you knew my mother, I think — you were ‘faculty wives’ together — ‘Take care what you say, dear, it can never be unsaid.’” Woods paused. He was breathing deeply, audibly as if he’d been running. “Just, I admire you. I’m just kidding — sort of kidding — about ‘Uranus’ — being an ‘emissary.’ See, I did a research project in an undergraduate course — ‘History of Science’ — a log of the NASA ship Voyager that was launched in 1977 and didn’t ‘visit’ Uranus until 1986 — one of the ‘Ice Giants’ — composed of ice and rocks — the very soul of Uranus is ice and rocks — but such beautiful moon-rings — twenty-seven moons, at a minimum! Uranus ate into my soul, it was a porous time in my life. Now — I am over it, I think! Mrs. Zalk — Leah? — you are looking at me so strangely, as if you don’t know me! Would you care for a — cigarette?”

“Would I care for a — cigarette?” Leah stared at the blandly smiling young man as if he’d invited her to take heroin with him. “No. I would not.”

She was thinking, not only had she not seen the Gottschalks that evening in her house, she hadn’t seen either Caroline or Byron — was it Byron, or Brian? — in a long time. In fact hadn’t she heard that Caroline had been ill the previous spring…

“It doesn’t matter, Mrs. Zalk. Really.”

“What doesn’t matter?”

“Cigarettes. Smoking. If you smoke, or not. Our fates are genetic — determined at birth.” Woods paused, frowning. “Or do I mean — conception . Determined at conception. ”

“Not entirely,” Leah said. “Nothing is determined entirely. ”

“Not entirely . But then, Mrs. Zalk, nothing is entire. ”

Leah wasn’t sure what they were talking about and she wasn’t sure she liked it. The disingenuous blue eyes gleamed at her behind round glasses. Woods was saying, with a downward glance, both self-deprecatory and self-displaying, “My case — I’m an ‘endomorph.’ I had no choice about it, my fate lay in my genes. My father, and my father’s father — stocky, big, with big wrists, thick stubby arms. Now Dr. Zalk, for instance — ”

“‘Dr. Zalk’? What of him?”

Dr. Zalk was Leah’s husband. It made her uneasy to be speaking of him in such formal terms. Woods, oblivious of his companion, plunged on as if confiding in Leah: “My grandfather, too. You know — ‘Hans Gottschalk.’ He was on that team that won the Nobel Prize — or it was said, he should have been on the team. I mean, he was on the team — molecular biologists — Rockefeller U. — who won the prize, and he should have won a prize, too. Anyway — Hans had ceased smoking by the age of forty but it made no difference. We’d hear all about Grandfather’s ‘willpower’ — as if what was ordinary in another was extraordinary in him, since he was an ‘extraordinary’ man — but already it was too late. Not that he knew — no one could know. Grandfather for all his genius had a genetic predisposition to — whatever invaded his lungs. So with us all — it’s in the stars .”

“Is it!” Leah tasted cold. She had no idea what Woods was talking about except she knew that Harris would be scornful. Stars!